Hours of fun in your own lunchbox!

My first Mame arcade project was a raging success eventually marred by the fact that my cabinet weighed a tonne and wasn't practical to cart up with us from Melbourne to the Gold Coast. So I sold it.

My second attempt at building something slightly smaller here on the GC (A control base to plug into a computer) resulted in a lot of carved plywood and a big mess. I eventually scrapped it not having the current facilities to finish it up. (I finished the top half roughly)

My third Mame project? A raging success again only far smaller and stupidly cheap to boot..



Because after I dismantled everything after project 2, I ended up with a bunch of buttons, joysticks and encoders and nowhere to put them. Loathe to sell them after such little use (I got them working as a test but never finished the project) a new plan was needed.

You will be useful again...one day

Since I don't have the room for a full cabinet nor the work shed space to build something even half sized, I needed something I could bolt together easily with basic hand tools in the space of a day or so. And so inspired by the very container I threw all the buttons into, I created:

LunchMame! A lunchbox Mame usb controller!

Plug as many of these babies as you have players ready to play into a PC based Mame setup and off you go! (And the best part is that you can knock one of these up easily in the space of an afternoon!)

How to make a LunchMame Controller

You will need:

A suitable size lunchbox (see below for the size I used which fit everything in nicely)
Buttons and locknuts
Joysticks
Encoders and wires (I got all of these control parts via Aliexpress. You can buy packages with everything on board and it's up to you if you want the light up LED buttons or not)
Nuts and bolts (and sockets/shifters for them)
A drill (my Ryobi power drill from fathers day years ago was brilliant for this)
Spade bits or hole saw bits (spade bits preferable)
A pen knife (or if you have a rotary tool that's preferable)
Time and plenty of coffee

The lunchbox itself cost me just $3.50 from Kmart with the theory being if I break it, a replacement is easy to find. I've gone with a Klip-it style lid to make it easier to pop the lid off and fix/fine tune if I need to. Originally I was trying to track down a 6L version but the 2L is absolutely ideal.

Button and joystick layout were all thanks to Slagcoin and once again I've used the same layout as my first Mame project, finding this a great setup. Printing out the Standard Japanese Arcade Layout 96PPI I found was absolutely ideal as I could fit everything comfortably within the confines of the lid and still have space for other things like a coin and start button.

I trimmed it down to fit on the lid and then taped it down to the lid with plenty of tape because I used it as an actual drilling guide and the tonnes of tape mean I'm not suddenly tearing paper off that I need for other holes with every hole cut out.

Firstly some guide holes with a small drill bit into where the buttons and joystick are going to be cut out.

Then we flip it over and cut in with the spade bit so it's no so messy on the top of our controller. I'm using a 25mm spade bit because it was the only one I had handy, so a little filing/cutting/grinding is going to be needed on each hole for a snug fit.

Put a bit of scrap wood against the back to make a cleaner cut with the spade bit

With the cutting guide still taped in place, it looks a little rough currently but when you take that way, things start to look a little cleaner.

To fix up those ragged edges, I started with a pen knife but managed to snap a couple of the blades in the process. Getting annoyed, I broke out the big guns - in this case the Ozito rotary tool! It still had some kind of fining attachment on board and even at low speeds it helped smooth things out and open up the holes enough to get the buttons in snugly.

Conveniently I could remove the top metal plate of the joysticks which makes it perfect for lining up the drill holes. Tape it in place and drill away! (I used a 4.5mm bit for M4 bolts)

 

Now we work on each hole until each button sits in perfectly. We're starting to look like a real controller here!

Work out where you want your one player start button - in this layout there's a little bit of space that you can cut into right here. You can see that I've already started to plug things into the encoder. (For the coin button, I've ended up putting on on the side of the controller.)

This has since been replaced with a button that says 'Coin'. Luckily no matter which way you fit the lid on, the button still fits!

We're going to need a hole in the back for the USB cord via the encoder - a 10mm drill bit and half a second with the rotary tool to open it up just that little bit more was all we needed to get the white plastic connector through.

With the basic wiring in for the buttons and the joystick, it's time for the daisy chain wiring. Of course clever me had hacked it up for project number two but a few minutes with the soldering iron got it back to where it should be and taking off the lid gave me plenty of space to plug everything in (and ultimately change things open when some of the buttons wouldn't light up the first time around..) 

One thing I love about the zero delay encoder (apart from being pretty cheap) is the provision for 5V power - plug into it with your daisy chain and huzzah, lights a plenty with no need to run another cord to a power supply (or into your PSU).

And that's it! You could of course paint it up if you choose/cover it in stickers etc too but I'm enjoying the look of barely contained wire chaos going on under the bright lights.

And of course once you've made your first one correctly, time to build one each for the kids!

As for which Mame setup/frontend you want to use to put these controllers through their paces, that's up to you. Personally I've always enjoyed Gameex and find it pretty easy to setup and fine tune and there's nothing like the entertainment a good three player game in full swing can bring.

(Made your own Lunchmame? I'd love to see it! Let me know how you go with a comment below!)